What is a “madia“, better what was it?
Its name in Umbrian dialect is “mattra”, it used to be a bread cupboard where the housewives kept the bread loaves for almost a week, stored flour, yeast, made handmade pasta, gnocchi, cakes and the local “torta al testo”, the typical umbrian focaccia.
A humble furniture considered the symbol of the farm kitchens and the rural culture, flavoured as wheat, tasting of good things.
As a teen ager, I broke the sacrality of the madia as a symbolic furniture, transforming an old family one into a pop-art styled, yellow painted-mulitpurpose board, so proud of my intelligent re-use of an antique piece of furniture!
But nowadays, my old good madia came back to the kitchen, to play its traditional role, a wooden bread cupboard, steady just like our roots, “sacred” just like the bread, symbol of the most genuine mediterranean culture.
During walking tours, we can find Madias in our local flea-markets and in the local Rural Life Museums … more about it during HappyCooking cooking class!
